Abstract

Abstract:

I examine Oscar Wilde's review of Herbert A. Giles's English translation of Chuang Tzu, a foundational Chinese philosophical text of early Taoism. Through exploring the aesthetic and ideological affinities between Wilde's writings and the ancient Chinese Taoist text, I investigate how Wilde interpreted the philosophical idea of wu wei (inaction) within Chuang Tzu, and how he appropriated Chinese wisdom to develop his passive activism in the 1890s, which aimed to reform Victorian political, social, and cultural institutions through "doing nothing."

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